Team Baron's Stage

If you are a person, chances are your answer is "What the heck is a Kamen Rider" BUT NO MATTER.

I'M SUPER PUMPED.

While Kamen Rider Amazon wasn't the best Kamen Rider of 1975, it probably was the best of 1974. Maybe. Ok, I haven't seen X fully so I'm not actually qualified to make the call, but still. I am qualified to say: Amazon is awesome. And while the original actor may not be returning, the fact that we're getting a new series with new Amazons sounds kind of amazing. That the staff behind the project has made some really great series before is encouraging, and that the mini-series is gonna be Amazon Prime-exclusive is hilarious. I am so hyped for this.

Just look at this guy. He already looks like he's ready to chop monsters in the jugular, to tear their bodies limb from limb, while their vile blood stains the ground, his claws, and jaws. Just like in the good old days. It's gonna be great.

I watched a bunch of anime this year. Between being busy with school, busy with work, and busy wasting my time on other things, I somehow found the time to watch way too many other silly things. I think I've watched more things this year than any other. So I thought I'd look back on this year of...watching things.

Currently my anime watching list looks like this, since I just finished two series and we're in between seasons.

Princess Tutu (pretty great so far, btw) and both the first and the currently airing seasons of Precure. I guess this is how the year ends.

But that's just what I'm watching, let's see what I watched:

Old series I watched this year:-Inferno Cop-Inugami-san and Nekoyama-san-Nisekoi-Cardcaptor Sakura-Gakkatsu!-Pokemon the Origin (counts?)-No Game No Life-Kaiba-Psycho-Pass-Vividred Operation-Fantasista Doll-Another-Psycho-Pass 2-Wooser's Hand to Mouth Life-Wooser's Hand to Mouth Life Awakening Arc-Tesagure! Bukatsu-mono-No. 6-Tesagure Bukatsu-mono Encore-Heartcatch Precure-Gatchaman Crowds-Beyond the Boundary-Blast of Tempest-Chronicles of the Going Home Club-Cuticle Detective Inaba-Hetalia World Series-Is this a Zombie?-Nichijou-My Little Monster-Is this a Zombie? Of the Dead-Love Live (both seasons)-Selector Infected Wixoss-El Cazador de la Bruja-Like the last three thirds of Digimon Frontier-Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet-Selector Spread Wixoss-Hidamari Sketch-Azumanga Daioh-Hidamari Sketch x 365-School-Live!-Canaan-Hidamari Sketch x Hoshimittsu

In summary: a bunch. Ranging from the shortest of short series to extremely long stuff like Cardcaptor Sakura. It's hard to pick favorites. I managed to watch a lot of pretty great shows (Tesagure, School-Live, Inaba, Psycho-Pass, Kaiba, Kitakubu, Nichijou, Heartcatch, Gatcha...). I also watched some real meh stuff (Fantasista, KoreZom, Gargantia...). And a lot of things in between My general opinion trends towards positive for this year though. All in all satisfactory showings.

In summary: also quite a bunch. I watched just...a lot of series this year. Peaked at watching like 17 in summer. Way too much, would not recommend. Anyway, the danger with watching currently airing shows is you don't know what to expect, so things can go very wrong. This was the case quite often this year. Spring was mostly bad (garbage like Seraph of the the End and disappointing showings from Nisekoi: and most others really made that season drag), Fall was mostly bad (with the one exception of Owarimonogatari everything in that season was alright at best, and Comet Lucifer is terrible). Winter was mostly good (though it still had terrible stuff like Tokyo Ghoul, KanColle, rocky series in Aldnoah, etc.) and Summer was for the most part pretty good (Classroom Crisis and Dandelion aside). But there's hidden gems here and there, and they were pretty great. Death Parade, Shimoseka and Owarimonogatari are probably my favorite series of the year, and of their respective seasons. Yurikuma Arashi, Earth Defense Club LOVE!, Parasyte, Tesagure, Gatchaman were pretty great as well. A rocky year all in all, with a weak finish, but with enough good stuff to make up for it. Kinda. I guess. Or maybe not. Honestly, the really bad shows were about as bad as the really good ones were good. It's a struggle.

I also watched a bunch of movies, but don't feel like remembering them too much (off the top of my head, Sakasama no Patema, Wolf Children, Cencoroll, the Beyond the Boundary ones, associated others for series I watched, etc. I'm forgetting a few though...). Also Digimon Adventure tri. I liked Saikai a bunch. It wasn't the best thing ever, but a decent enough start.

I've been seeing a bunch of these ads from Best Buy lately. This whole "winning the holidays" thing just strikes me as disgustingly misanthropic. And I don't even really care for Christmas all that much. It's just. Pretty bad commercials.

Lots of deals going on right now. Not too many of them really grab my attention. But, I have ordered a few things I've been meaning to for a while...ordered the Complete Calvin & Hobbes (plus one lonely tokyo ghoul) last night, taking advantage of B&N's 30% off deal, so that's cool. Calvin and Hobbes is cool. TRU has some alright deals on video games...considered getting Omega Ruby since they had it discounted by 10 bucks, but I don't really see myself using my 3DS much ever since its control stick started falling apart (sigh...). So I ended up going for the 2-Discount-Games-For-25 deal to get Kingdom Hearts I.5 and the Ico & Shadow of the Colossus bundle. All of which I've wanted to play for a long time, so for 25, not too bad. I would have tried to get II.5 as well, but the only option for the KH stuff was store pickup and understandably none of them had any.

It's probably just as well that I didn't get the sequel, anyway. I have no idea when I'll actually get to play any of it. I haven't touched Persona 3 in over a year, and I still have like 10 games I haven't even touched from the summer Steam sale. I haven't even finished Portal.

So I'm in the last stretch of my cultural anthropology course. We're covering patterns of gift-giving in non-western societies and whatnot, including Polynesia, which is of course interesting. I'm reading Mauss's The Gift for this part of the course.(It's about gifts). So I'm carrying along, reading, when all of The Sudden